The London Stock Exchange is building a market that barely sleeps. It has unveiled LSE 24, a new venue designed to run five days a week from evening to early morning, built for the digital, algorithm-driven and AI-agent trading it expects to define the next era of markets. In doing so, it joins a global race among exchanges to stretch the trading day well beyond the traditional daytime session.
How LSE 24 would run
The new venue would trade from 5pm to just before 8am London time, Monday to Friday, with a half-hour pause each evening to run its end-of-day processing. The exchange's Main Market keeps its usual 8am-to-4.30pm hours, so LSE 24 sits alongside the daytime session rather than replacing it. Testing is due to start by the end of 2026, with the first products, exchange-traded funds and similar listed instruments, going live in the first half of 2027, before the venue expands into ordinary shares. London is starting with those products because it is already a leading global hub for them.
Why do it, and who is worried
The pitch is built for the future. LSE 24 promises secure connections for "agent-based" trading, where AI agents place and execute orders on a client's behalf around the clock. LSE plc chief executive Julia Hoggett called it "an important step in the evolution of our markets," offering clients flexibility beyond traditional hours and reinforcing London's position as a leading global financial centre. London is not alone: in the United States, the New York Stock Exchange has won preliminary approval for a 22-hour day and Nasdaq has filed for a 23-hour session. Nasdaq is targeting that session as soon as December, while CME has already rolled out round-the-clock crypto futures and Cboe plans a near-24-hour US equities venue of its own. Not everyone is sold. Some on Wall Street warn that overnight trading can be thinly traded and potentially destabilising.
The daytime bell has set the rhythm of global markets for generations; the exchanges now betting on the night are wagering that the machines never want to clock off.
